might. Even at the time
our sentiment was not solely jealousy, but very largely shame.
Wellington, the grimmest and even the most unamiable of Tories, with no
French sympathies and not enough human ones, has recorded his opinion of
his Prussian allies in terms of curt disgust. Peel, the primmest and
most snobbish Tory that ever praised "our gallant Allies" in a frigid
official speech, could not contain himself about the conduct of
Blucher's men. Our middle classes did well to adorn their parlours with
the picture of the "Meeting of Wellington and Blucher." They should
have hung up a companion piece of Pilate and Herod shaking hands. Then,
after that meeting amid the ashes of Hougomont, where they dreamed they
had trodden out the embers of all democracy, the Prussians rode on
before, doing after their kind. After them went that ironical aristocrat
out of embittered Ireland, with what thoughts we know; and Blucher, with
what thoughts we care not; and his soldiers entered Paris, and stole the
sword of Joan of Arc.

IV--_The Coming of the Janissaries_

The late Lord Salisbury, a sad and humorous man, made many public and
serious remarks that have been proved false and perilous, and many
private and frivolous remarks which were valuable and ought to be
immortal. He struck dead the stiff and false psychology of "social
reform," with its suggestion that the number of public-houses made
people drunk, by saying that there were a number of bedrooms at
Hatfield, but they never made him sleepy. Because of this it is possible
to forgive him for having talked about "living and dying nations":
though it is of such sayings that living nations die. In the same spirit
he included the nation of Ireland in the "Celtic fringe" upon the west
of England. It seems sufficient to remark that the fringe is
considerably broader than the garment. But the fearful satire of time
has very sufficiently avenged the Irish nation upon him, largely by the
instrumentality of another fragment of the British robe which he cast
away almost contemptuously in the North Sea. The name of it is
Heligoland; and he gave it to the Germans.

The subsequent history of the two islands on either side of England has
been sufficiently ironical. If Lord Salisbury had foreseen exactly what
would happen to Heligoland, as well as to Ireland, he might well have
found no sleep at Hatfield in one bedroom or a hundred. In the eastern
isle he was strengthening a fortress t